What Did The People Around You Notice?

[Guest gwenthlian]

When I first came out to my parents about a year ago the initial response was shock. They couldnt see that there had been any clues in my early childhood or any possible indication that I was a girl. Once they had calmed down a bit, began on the road to acceptance and were thinking a bit clearer they started to remember all sorts of things they had missed.

My dad remarked the other day that he cant believe he hadnt seen it earlier, no 17 year old boy has a chinese teapot and obsesses over getting a matching set of cups and saucers. A friend who dosent even know about me said I am far too perceptive to be a guy. My sister said she wondered why the makeup pages in the argos catalog were turned over and my mother says she wondered why all my best friends were girls.

Just wondering what other peoples parents spotted that might suggest the way they were inside, its not exactly obvious

[Guest S. Chrissie]

Let me think about it and I will come back to you

The only sign was that when I played strategy games that need building bases, my base would be very organized I have to arrange every building in perfect order and shape. And there's the crazy OCD thingy, my room's always too tidy to be a guy's room.

[Guest gwenthlian]

there was this huge craze over Age of Empires in my primary school, had to play to have any chance of friends at all. I spent hours putting everything in rows!

great minds have similar strange obsessions? ^^

[Guest Donna Jean]

there was this huge craze over Age of Empires in my primary school, had to play to have any chance of friends at all. I spent hours putting everything in rows!

great minds have similar strange obsessions? ^^

Oh, Gwen...........

I LOVE AOE!

Played every Friday night for years with people from around the country!

That is SO cool!

Rows for me, too!

Love

Donna Jean

[Guest S. Chrissie]

there was this huge craze over Age of Empires in my primary school, had to play to have any chance of friends at all. I spent hours putting everything in rows!

great minds have similar strange obsessions? ^^

Ah yes, Age of Empires The good times.

I concur.

[Guest LightNebula]

I spent a lot of time organizing stuff in strategy games like that, too. Sorry I don't have a response (that I can think of at least right now) to the topic.

[Guest AshleeB]

Its funny actually... one of the first things people said to me after telling them (apart from the fact that most say they expected it) was "well... you do sit like a girl..." lol i never thought that sitting with my legs tucked into me was a feminine thing to do. now i know

there was that... aaand what else... alot of my friends told me that i cared way to much about my hair to be a dude. in fact my best buddy mentioned to me "you care WAY to much about your hair for one. i mean... i know like... a billion gay guys and probably the same number of hyper girly straight guys and YOU top them all"

just little things like that

oh and my obsession for make up... no wonder people already had a clue

LOVES!

Ash!

[Guest My_Genesis]

AoE is awesome. I never organized things in rows in that game though, LOL, I never considered that part of the "strategy", unless we are talking about teaching the military men how to march in a straight line

erm... one thing my parents did say to me recently (i made a post about this too) was that I'm less of a girl than one of my guy friends. I told them that he spent $425 at the mall, $325 of that was on clothes...lol... and from his own money. So my parents do seem to notice things, but I guess they don't say it too often? cuz they really got a kick out of that... idk.

Also, in college one day, we were talking about our favourite toys growing up. This same guy said he used to love easy bake ovens, and I said I used to love Lincoln Logs and Legoes. So this other guy said that we should have "switched", he should have been the girl and I should have been the guy. (In case anyone is wondering he's not gay..) Mind you, I did have an easy-bake oven, i remember wanting one really badly when i was like 6 years old, and ended up getting one for christmas..... then i used it like twice before i realized there's nothing that exciting about it. lol.

[Guest SaraNetherlands]

Difficult. I always was a bit of a 'coolcat' which often made people not notice my feminine side. I can go into whole details about why I have not at all times been open to my parents and their over-protective attitude (involving how I should act socially) with their fear of me being ignored because of being in a wheelchair. However, I won't.

To sum it up, the signs (now that I reflect back) were subtile.

Some signs of me being a hidden girl were:

* Hugging other children no matter their gender and patting hands if they were afraid for example.

* Having many cat dolls and dressing them up and talking to them.

* Playing gladly with girl toys.

* Often being 'mommy' when playing mommy and daddy with friends.

Some signs making it hard to recognize me as a hidden girl were:

* I always took the lead, having leadership skills.

* There were no girls of my age, but more than 10 boys of my age who I'd play with. That'd lead into playing 'soldier', or 'knights' or similar boyish games I grew fond of.

* Being an avid video-gamer playing also more masculine games (though I never liked sports and car games curiously).

* Running around (not literally as I'm disabled ) with wooden swords and toy guns, shouting orders and rude comments like a bull a small levee.

The biggest thing making me less obvious is that I love women and am a 'transsexual lesbian' or rather I prefer to call myself a 'lesbian with a transsexual past'. That made it hard to notice for others that I am transsexual. I always rather worn a cute top with skulls or a retro stylish artwork than a flowery dress, which in earlier day (in the Netherlands to my experience strongly) was a counter-argument on the statement of being transsexual.

[Guest Nikk]

Well, I'm more of a secondary tg (stuff didn't come up until later), and I was a pretty girly child. I still have some signs from young childhood though.

Signs for me were:

-After about 6th grade I obsessed about chestical removal

-My best friends after elementary school were the middle group of a class divided into 'girls' and 'boys'

-I've always LOVED bugs and critters that girls would go 'ewwww' at. I am your humane bug-removal man

-I collected dolls, but I played with stuffed animals. In second grade, I had a stuffed snake named snakey, and it stayed wrapped around my neck all the time.

-I was kind of a physical bully in elementary school (where as females are more well known for mental manipulation)

-I've never had any problems matching myself to a 'buff' ideal, whereas most of my girl friends would rather be sleek.

There are other things, but I'm generally known for being a very gay guy, matching to more artsy activities, and being in the middle group instead of the macho man group.

[Guest My_Genesis]

-I was kind of a physical bully in elementary school (where as females are more well known for mental manipulation)

that's funny thinking back i think i did (or attempted) a kind of verbal bullying. (so if physical = guy and mental manipulation = girl, where does that put me???) but it was usually my way of trying to get back at people who i felt bullied me first. um..but i did throw a stone at one of my guy friend's big toe when we were like 5-6 years old, i actually forgot about it til we talked about bullying in my psych class in college, somehow that surfaced and i started thinking about it a lot. long story but that was also, im pretty sure, done out of hurt.

[Guest Nikk]

@MG: I dunno, I'm juuuust relying on the thin, moldy boards of stereotypes (and psychological data says that that's usually the case - USUALLY you don't find guys trying to manipulate people into thinking things, and USUALLY you don't get girls trying to beat people up).

[Guest gwenthlian]

I'm not sure I ever really bullied people either way, I was a bit busy being manipulated and beaten up

[Guest My_Genesis]

I'm not sure I ever really bullied people either way, I was a bit busy being manipulated and beaten up

lol.

im sorry to hear that though.

my thing is i always fought back, always tried to plot "revenge"..sometimes took it a little too far and got myself into trouble...i just wanted to "win", i guess. (im still kind of like that haha)

i was kind of a troublemaker in elementary school. relating this back to the original topic... i tended to get into trouble a lot more than almost any girl in my class did.

then somehow in jr high/ high school i went the other way and became withdrawn and somewhat of a nerd.

now, idk, im kind of a mix of the two, except on the troublemaker side I've just become more mature about it

and verbal bullying has turned into me being overly blunt, brutally honest (whatever else you want to call it) and inadvertently offending or insulting people, lol.

[Guest *Elizabeth Anne*]

I know this TOPIC is mainly for younger people and it is a long stretch back to my youth and even back to High School. This is scatterd a bit because of that.

I think my mother liked my girl tendancies early, because I was a model child. I NEVER was a screamer and later when I was old enough to talk we did that - talked! I told her I was a girl - that was something she probably noticed - grin. She let me play with paper dolls until I was 6 years old. And I read books - I had a fifth grade reading ability when tested in the first grade - and guess what my favorite reading material was, magazines! McCalls was my favorite, then the old movie magazines (I am a seriously senior - I was age 6 when we got a TV) And my dad fought me and my constant reading habit, once tossing all my prized books in the trash.

I guess wearing my sister clothes when I was eight might have been a clue. My parents thought it was a phase. When they got critical, I went underground.

Playing house with the girl across the street - we would take turns being the mommy. She was a great friend - and I could play with her toys and dolls - we did it for three years until my dad made me stop.

My artwork - I LOVE drawing. My dad made me stop taking art and take shop. I guess my reputation in Jr HS was set. The shop teacher said 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN HERE!"

Getting caught playing Jacks on the girls side of the playground in elementary school, They said if I got caught again they would make me wear a dress (oh wow I was sooooo tempted!). They would allow one co-gender activity - 4-square. Really got good at it and the girls complained, so suddenly I wasn't as good someway... and all was better.

In HS I was a nerd - I was in the chemistry club, the physics club, and president of the debate club. That's a nerd, but even the nerds stayed away from me to some degree.

And at age 21 - the duffle bag of women's clothes might have been a hint. Especially the heels. My sisters saw me purge (MOM, it is just a phase, I said when they found the bag). My sisters said I had some neat makeup that they wanted to try.

Buying fake fingernails at the variety store instead of cheap toys - with the 29 cents my aunt gave me when she came to visit. I would lose one or two nails - I use double stick tape to make them last - my aunt found some in the cushion for the couch. I kept mum - they never did figure that out.

My circle of friends was always female.

I kept pantyhose t college - the excuse was to keep my boots spit-shined in ROTC (you military know about that trick - the hose as the buffer). I had pairs I did not use for polishing.

Physically? My dad made me wear a butch haircut. After I got out of ROTC, I grew my hair past my shoulders. I never could grow a beard, I tried a moustache but it looked fake.

And the list goes on - it was a battle my father and I had. My mother was happy the way I was - a loving sensitive son. My dad wanted a ball-player son. I just wanted to be me.

Lizzy